The necessity of an arctic community to produce fresh food year-round resulted in the creation of a hydroponics greenhouse within a shipping container. The technique could have other applications, including Urban gardening options.

A 40-foot shipping container was repurposed into a hydroponic greenhouse in Spokane, Washington, then shipped to Montreal, where a cargo ship has taken it through the St. Lawrence River, around the coast of Newfoundland, and is now traveling through the Hudson Bay. When the delivery arrives on October 19, Churchill will be the seventh community in the Far North to begin using this type of farm, called the Arctic Growing System.

“If you’re in a community in Northern Canada where it already takes a week for produce to get to an urban center, and another week or two for it to fly to three different communities . . . everything that was fresh is no longer really edible.” [Photo: Vertical Harvest Hydroponics/The Growcer]

“The impetus for the whole project was the high cost of food and lack of opportunities for employment in Inuit communities,” says Corey Ellis, cofounder and CEO of The Growcer, the startup that makes the shipping container farms and works with the small communities that operate the farms.

The company was born out of a project called the Northern Innovation Hub, which aims to find solutions to local problems like food security, housing, and employment. Ellis and others worked with remote communities to brainstorm potential solutions, and landed on local food production as a way both to spur economic development and improve health.

Paul Gordon is the publisher and editor of iState.TV. He has published and edited newspapers, poetry magazines and online weekly magazines.
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